We Are Pirates Till The End

Galvestonians who call this place home, by birth or choice, view their island as a refuge.  To them, it’s not so much a plot of silty sand elevating from the bed of the Gulf of Mexico but a floating galleon of rebel life protected from life’s musket balls by the waters insulating it from the mainland establishment.  We know that the pretty painted pillars of aquatic scenery flanking the causeway are chiefly there for tourists.  If it were up to some of us, we would just as soon raise a flag of skull and crossbones at the entry to our rebel redoubt, scaring away the real estate carpetbaggers and spying constables hoping to bring order to this last holdout in Texas to traditional authority. 

Historically, Galvestonians have had a lot in common with the early 18th-century black flag pirates like Black Bart and Blackbeard – that is, we used to.  While cotton was king to the likes of the Moody’s, vice was a virtue to most other Islanders.  The Prohibition-era rum-running trade by inchoate gangs going by names such as “Downtown” and “Beach” eventually turned into a high criminal industry that operated in insolation from the violent chaos of urban centers such as Chicago and New York during the Roaring Twenties.  Taking their cue from Jean Lafitte, the French pirate of the “golden age of piracy” who operated in the Gulf in the early 19th century and founded the colony of Campeche on Galveston Island, the Island’s underworld buccaneers, such as brothers Sam and Rose Maceo, collectively founded the Free State of Galveston.  In the Free State (or the Republic of Galveston Island as it was also known), local authorities turned a convenient blind eye to illegal activities while routinely accepting booty bribes passed under the table.  Like the Caribbean pirate havens of Tortuga and Port Royal, early to mid-twentieth century, Galveston was an open city where vice was, in fact, quite a tourism draw.

Certainly, the trope of rebellious Galveston has been profitable to many looking to turn a buck on it.  In 1929, the Moody’s built their pirate namesake luxury hotel, The Buccaneer, at 22nd and Seawall, and then followed that with their mid-century modern, anti-pirate sounding Jack Tarr Hotel in the 1940’s.  Also, in the 1940s, the Maceo brothers converted their restaurant at 21st and Seawall into what was a truly authentic ‘pleasure pier’ with the exotic pirate haven moniker of Balinese Room.  An extension of the pier club out to over 600 feet from shore made it not quite in international waters but that much harder for the police to snag the illegal gambling activities located at the end of it. 

Of course, no pirate haven would be complete without the prostitutes.  And, prostitutes Galveston had in abundance in a red light district segregated along Post Office Street known as “The Line.”  Like their pirate captain counterparts, many madams took on rascally names – Mother Harvey, Queen Laura, and Madam Janet (the latter particularly well known for offering a menu of unique sexual “perversions” to her clients).   

As they say, all good things must come to an end, and the Free State would, in time, run its course.  With the usefulness of Galveston’s open city vice waning for an increasingly conservative state, the Maceo’s Balinese Room would be raided into oblivion, the whorehouses would (eventually) be shuttered, and the gambling. . .well, the jury is still out on that, its usefulness seeming to make a comeback to modern Island buccaneers such as BOI, Tilman Fertitta.  But, here we are at the end of IH-45, a port haven still a bit removed from traditional authority as any American can be.  Some of us remain believers, that we are the last pirate holdouts against a world dominated by states and corporations.  We dare to imagine ourselves separated spiritually, if not geographically, from the mainland chaos, isolated and protected here on our little island-as-galleon off the coast of the United States.  

To be sure, Galveston's twentieth-century Golden Age of Roguishness – the open city era of freedom for gambling, prostitution, liquor, etc. – was the very simulacra of the piracy mythology.  But piracy is, after all, a subjective matter.  If Johnny Depp’s characterization of pirate Jack Sparrow has told us anything, it’s that we can make our own rules that suit our lives.  However, for us Galvestonians who still consider ourselves as corsairs plying the Gulf waters off the shore of the United States, like early plunderers such as Captain Kidd and Jean Lafitte must have felt near their end, we’re starting to see that rebel lifestyle erode little by little bit with each new absent owner short-term rental popping up all over the place.  Sadly, there is an obvious correlation between the increase in those rentals and the decline in our localized pirate culture.  And, the only pieces of eight we see now are the plastic ones tossed out of Mardi Gras floats with a great flourish by men in tuxedos and women in furs (except, oddly, from the costumed pirate wannabes who always seem quite stingy with their doubloon tossing – take note, costumed pirates). 

I remember traveling to Galveston as a young boy.  Coming to that hump before the Seawall and then surmounting it, the sight of the Gulf always thrilled me.  But it wasn’t really the beach and surf that my brother and I were after.  It was Jean Lafitte’s treasure chest, which our father told us was buried there someplace in the dunes, and we were determined to find it with our red tin shovels – even if it took us all day.  Now, as a rebel who calls this place home, I still think I can find Lafitte’s treasure.  Maybe, though, it’s not in the dunes.  Maybe it’s right here on my block where I live with the other Galveston rogues.